We didn't use motion-capture to determine the movement of the chimp. What we wanted to capture with a live action shoot was the emotion an actor brings. Because chimps don't show much emotion, at least much obvious emotion that everyday humans could recognize and connect with.

Taking emotion from the actor, we incorporated that in with our chimp and added emotion to the artistic and anatomical detail we'd already been working on. The human element gives us emotion, but details make the chimp real and give him authority as a member of his clan.

We concentrated on making the eyes the center of emotion. We wanted the eyes to say everything. So the viewer can concentrate on the most emotional part of the body in both chimps and humans.

Usually the surface of CG creatures is stiff. The first thing we realized was we needed to make the chimp's skin move. The hair sticks on skin, the skin sticks on muscle, the muscle sticks on bone. For us the wrinkles were very important, chimps are covered in little wrinkles. We created a trick, or rather a very efficient way of making wrinkles move on the body without using heavy models.